No search was conducted on the subject matter of this specification in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office or in any other search facility.
We are unaware of any prior art which is relevant to the method disclosed in this specification. We are aware of patents relating to the application of coating materials to glass articles in order to develop a coated glass article. However, these patents generally show various ways of applying a coating material to a glass article and they contain no teachings directed to the method of this invention.
Modern architects today use vast amounts of glass for enclosing large buildings such as commercial office buildings and hotels. The glass used in such structures is generally a high performance reflective glass which is effective in reflecting heat and light so that it does not enter the building's interior. A measure of a glass' ability to reflect heat and light is a measure which in the industry is known as a "shading coefficient." A shading coefficient is defined as the ratio of the solar heat gain for any given glass to the solar heat gain under the same conditions for 1/8 inch clear glass. The industry also knows that high performance reflective glass has a shading coefficient of 0.40 or less.
In many cases, the glass itself, for example, a bronze body color or a green body color glass, will have a shading coefficient based upon the body color in the glass and the thickness of the glass. For example, a normal bronze body glass having a thickness of 1/4 inch would have a shading coefficient of 0.71. In order to decrease the shading coefficient (which results in a reduction of the value of the shading coefficient), a metallic oxide film can be applied on one of the surfaces of the glass sheet. This metallic oxide film results in an overall reduction of the shading coefficient of the so-treated glass sheet. In most cases, such filmed glass is assembled into the building with the surface having the film thereon facing into the interior of the building so that the film is protected from the elements. If a two sheet insulated window is formed, the film surface is on the sealed side of the window.